NDAA, what it really means.

Claim:   The National Defense Authorization Act would allow "the U.S. Military to arrest American citizens in their own back yard without charge or trial."

Read more at http://www.snopes.com/politics/military/ndaa.asp#BcIZOgBtqwYKLLmT.99

Post by Jeffrey Newell, founder of Autistic Skeptic

Via Snopes

Claim: The National Defense Authorization Act would allow "the U.S. Military to arrest American citizens in their own back yard without charge or trial."

FACT: Lawmakers and the public have expressed concerns over provisions inserted into the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDA)), a defense appropriations bill, which would mandate military interrogation and detention for any suspected member of Al Qaeda and authorize indefinite detention of terrorist suspects without trial. Critics expressed concern that these provisions would virtually eliminate the role of federal law enforcement (i.e., F.B.I., federal prosecutors, and federal courts) in dealing with terrorist suspects, and that the provisions would worded so broadly that they could be applied to Americans and legal residents of the United States, allowing U.S. citizens to be seized and held in indefinite military custody. An amendment to the NDAA proposed by Senator Mark Udall of Colorado would have stripped the detainee measures out of the NDAA, but that proposal was defeated in the Senate.

Critics of the bill maintain that section 1021 is overly broad in its wording because it allows for the detention of "covered persons pending disposition under the law of war" but does not preclude indefinite detention. As well, Section 1022 makes military custody mandatory for a subset of detainees, and although that section does include an exception for U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents, critics maintain that the exception does not prevent U.S. citizens from being detained by the military; it merely does not require the military to detain U.S. citizens.

The original version of the NDAA allowed for the issuance of waivers granting exceptions to mandated military custody of Al Qaeda suspects if the secretary of defense, the attorney general, and the head of national intelligence all agreed. President Obama initially threatened to veto the NDAA, but then indicated he would agree to sign a revised version that allowed the president to issue such waivers on his own and no longer explicitly banned the use of civilian courts in prosecuting Al Qaeda suspects.

President Obama signed the NDAA at the end of 2011, stating in his signing statement that he disagreed with the necessity of its detention provisions and asserting that his "Administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens" because "doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a Nation," promising that his "Administration will interpret section 1021 in a manner that ensures that any detention it authorizes complies with the Constitution, the laws of war, and all other applicable law":

The fact that I support this bill as a whole does not mean I agree with everything in it. In particular, I have signed this bill despite having serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation, and prosecution of suspected terrorists.

Section 1021 affirms the executive branch's authority to detain persons covered by the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) (Public Law 107-40; 50 U.S.C. 1541 note). This section breaks no new ground and is unnecessary.

Section 1022 seeks to require military custody for a narrow category of non-citizen detainees who are "captured in the course of hostilities authorized by the Authorization for Use of Military Force." This section is ill-conceived and will do nothing to improve the security of the United States. The executive branch already has the authority to detain in military custody those members of al-Qa'ida who are captured in the course of hostilities authorized by the AUMF, and as Commander in Chief I have directed the military to do so where appropriate. I reject any approach that would mandate military custody where law enforcement provides the best method of incapacitating a terrorist threat. While section 1022 is unnecessary and has the potential to create uncertainty, I have signed the bill because I believe that this section can be interpreted and applied in a manner that avoids undue harm to our current operations.

Read the original article at http://www.snopes.com/politics/military/ndaa.asp#BcIZOgBtqwYKLLmT.99

FEMA mail stickers? Nope.

Post by Jeffrey Newell, founder of Autistic Skeptic


In this article I am going to debunk the myth of FEMA mail Stickers. This is a basic summary of the FEMA mail stickers.

Via Snopes

"Hi everyone, I've got a odd but very important question about these various mailbox stickers I see on not only my mailbox but on the mailboxes of people in my neighborhood and perhaps almost everywhere.

They are all round stickers, they are usually either as big as half dollar coins, or as small as nickels or pennies. They are either made out of a thin reflective plastic or the smaller ones I've seen are just plain paper.

Now one of the odd and scary things I have heard about these stickers is that they have been placed there by people in working in secret for not just the government but for a up coming one world government.

And that the color of the stickers refer to the fate of each person when either the one world government or martial law gets established in our country.

The red indicates that they will come after you and kill you immediately, the blue means they will take you to a concentration camp or a "FEMA camp" and torture you until you either obey or die.

Yellow means that they think you will mostly follow them or be no threat to them and they will just let you starve to death.

Where as pink means you are totally in obedience to them and will basically be their mind slave."

A common form of rumor holds that homes are being marked in some subtle way — through the use of anything from cable ties to chalk marks to colored stickers to ribbons, placed on curbs, sidewalks, mailboxes, lampposts, or trees — by groups intent on targeting the residents for nefarious purposes — anyone from burglars to dog thieves to government agents — who will be returning later to implement their plans of stealing from (or otherwise harming) the people who live in those homes. In nearly every case such rumors prove to be false: the markings in question typically turn out to be innocuous indicators left behind by legitimate groups working in the area (such as road crews,

utility companies, or surveyors), and the rumors are started by suspicious residents unfamiliar with the purpose of the markings who immediately leap to the unfounded conclusion that they must have some connection to recent (but purely coincidental) criminal activity in the neighborhood.

All such rumors generally fail in their very premise. Targeting homes for illicit purposes by marking them with some exterior symbol is unnecessarily inefficient: it requires time and effort to visit homes and mark them, it risks exposure from onlookers who might notice and call attention to the activity and discover its purpose, and the markings are too easily removed (accidentally or purposely) by residents or eradicated by weather, or overlooked by those supposed to be finding them afterwards. Yet all of these vagaries can be easily avoided in one simple way: just jotting down the addresses of the homes of interest. There's no good reason for bad guys to mark a home with some form of symbol as a method for being able to find and return to it later when they can more easily and safely accomplish the same thing simply by recording its address.

The marking of homes to identify them as targets for future activity makes sense only if the markings and the follow-up activity are being performed by different groups who are prevented by time and distance from communicating with each other between those two steps. But in today's world, where information such as an address list can be communicated almost instantaneously by e-mail or text message, and anyone with a cell phone can be reached virtually anywhere at any time, there are no such barriers. Such markings might be practical if the group creating them were doing so for the benefit of persons unknown to them (as in the case of so-called hobo signs), but that scenario makes little sense within a premise of organized criminal activity: crooks have little motivation to expend effort identifying prime targets for the benefit of other crooks unknown to them.

One of the more fantastic forms of this class of rumor holds that a government entity is furtively marking homes by placing colored dots on home mailboxes to identify the political allegiances of residents, and thus those residents' dispositions (i.e., killed immediately, hauled off to internment camps, or left alone), once the powerful group behind the scheme completes the process of seizing dictatorial control of the country:

A theory has come about in the past year about reflective stickers that many people across the U.S. have been finding on their mail boxes. The theory claims that the stickers have been placed by FEMA, and that people are being "color coded" based upon what the government knows about their political leanings.

Those who believe this theory claim that if you have a red sticker on your mail box, then FEMA has determined you to be a veteran, or a conservative, or a true patriot and that you are going to be killed on the first night that the New World Order takes over.

If you have a blue sticker, then FEMA has determined that you believe many of the same things the people with red stickers believe, but you are a follower by nature, a sheeple, and you will be herded off to one of the many FEMA camps that are allegedly being set up all over the U.S.

If you have a yellow sticker, then you rock! You are a strong supporter of socialism, the New World Order, and the King, U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama and you will be allowed to remain in your home — on house arrest.

If the mere premise of such a rumor weren't enough in itself to discredit it (surely any entity powerful enough to take control of the entire U.S. and lock up its citizens would have a better method for tracking the identities of its supporters and opponents than reflective stickers), consider all the logistical problems it would entail, such as:

• Agents would have to fan out and color code every house in the United States (without being observed or discovered), an enormous undertaking of time and manpower.


• Anyone who moved or otherwise changed residences between the marking of mailboxes and the takeover by the New World Order would be misidentified.


• Anyone could avoid the dire consequences of this scheme (or target others for punishment) by changing or swapping their mailbox stickers.


• Many dwellings are home to multiple residents with varying political allegiances who could not all be classified with a single marker.

It is true (as exemplified by the photograph displayed above) that in some neighborhoods small, round reflective stickers of varying colors can be found on mailboxes, so what is their real purpose? The answer can vary from area to area, but one common application is to help service workers who make their rounds in the darkness of nighttime or early morning hours to identify which homes belong to customers (or non-customers), and what level of service they are to receive. (For example, such stickers might aid newspaper carriers in quickly finding subscribers' homes and identifying whether the residents receive daily, weekly, or Sunday-only delivery.) Such colored stickers have also been employed in the service of other (non-illegal) schemes, such as using them to identify the mailboxes of postal customers who do not wish to receive junk mail.


Read more at http://www.snopes.com/politics/conspiracy/femastickers.asp#mK8eHmulIm2jJ00q.99

A common form of rumor holds that homes are being marked in some subtle way — through the use of anything from cable ties to chalk marks to colored stickers to ribbons, placed on curbs, sidewalks, mailboxes, lampposts, or trees — by groups intent on targeting the residents for nefarious purposes — anyone from burglars to dog thieves to government agents — who will be returning later to implement their plans of stealing from (or otherwise harming) the people who live in those homes. In nearly every case such rumors prove to be false: the markings in question typically turn out to be innocuous indicators left behind by legitimate groups working in the area (such as road crews, utility companies, or surveyors), and the rumors are started by suspicious residents unfamiliar with the purpose of the markings who immediately leap to the unfounded conclusion that they must have some connection to recent (but purely coincidental) criminal activity in the neighborhood.

All such rumors generally fail in their very premise. Targeting homes for illicit purposes by marking them with some exterior symbol is unnecessarily inefficient: it requires time and effort to visit homes and mark them, it risks exposure from onlookers who might notice and call attention to the activity and discover its purpose, and the markings are too easily removed (accidentally or purposely) by residents or eradicated by weather, or overlooked by those supposed to be finding them afterwards. Yet all of these vagaries can be easily avoided in one simple way: just jotting down the addresses of the homes of interest. There's no good reason for bad guys to mark a home with some form of symbol as a method for being able to find and return to it later when they can more easily and safely accomplish the same thing simply by recording its address.

The marking of homes to identify them as targets for future activity makes sense only if the markings and the follow-up activity are being performed by different groups who are prevented by time and distance from communicating with each other between those two steps. But in today's world, where information such as an address list can be communicated almost instantaneously by e-mail or text message, and anyone with a cell phone can be reached virtually anywhere at any time, there are no such barriers. Such markings might be practical if the group creating them were doing so for the benefit of persons unknown to them (as in the case of so-called hobo signs), but that scenario makes little sense within a premise of organized criminal activity: crooks have little motivation to expend effort identifying prime targets for the benefit of other crooks unknown to them.

One of the more fantastic forms of this class of rumor holds that a government entity is furtively marking homes by placing colored dots on home mailboxes to identify the political allegiances of residents, and thus those residents' dispositions (i.e., killed immediately, hauled off to internment camps, or left alone), once the powerful group behind the scheme completes the process of seizing dictatorial control of the country:

A theory has come about in the past year about reflective stickers that many people across the U.S. have been finding on their mail boxes. The theory claims that the stickers have been placed by FEMA, and that people are being "color coded" based upon what the government knows about their political leanings.

Those who believe this theory claim that if you have a red sticker on your mail box, then FEMA has determined you to be a veteran, or a conservative, or a true patriot and that you are going to be killed on the first night that the New World Order takes over.

If you have a blue sticker, then FEMA has determined that you believe many of the same things the people with red stickers believe, but you are a follower by nature, a sheeple, and you will be herded off to one of the many FEMA camps that are allegedly being set up all over the U.S.

If you have a yellow sticker, then you rock! You are a strong supporter of socialism, the New World Order, and the King, U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama and you will be allowed to remain in your home — on house arrest. If the mere premise of such a rumor weren't enough in itself to discredit it (surely any entity powerful enough to take control of the entire U.S. and lock up its citizens would have a better method for tracking the identities of its supporters and opponents than reflective stickers), consider all the logistical problems it would entail, such as:


Agents would have to fan out and color code every house in the United States (without being observed or discovered), an enormous undertaking of time and manpower.

Anyone who moved or otherwise changed residences between the marking of mailboxes and the takeover by the New World Order would be misidentified.

Anyone could avoid the dire consequences of this scheme (or target others for punishment) by changing or swapping their mailbox stickers.

Many dwellings are home to multiple residents with varying political allegiances who could not all be classified with a single marker.
It is true (as exemplified by the photograph displayed above) that in some neighborhoods small, round reflective stickers of varying colors can be found on mailboxes, so what is their real purpose? The answer can vary from area to area, but one common application is to help service workers who make their rounds in the darkness of nighttime or early morning hours to identify which homes belong to customers (or non-customers), and what level of service they are to receive. (For example, such stickers might aid newspaper carriers in quickly finding subscribers' homes and identifying whether the residents receive daily, weekly, or Sunday-only delivery.) Such colored stickers have also been employed in the service of other (non-illegal) schemes, such as using them to identify the mailboxes of postal customers who do not wish to receive junk mail.

SOURCE: http://www.snopes.com/politics/conspiracy/femastickers.asp

Hi everyone, I've got a odd but very important question about these various mailbox stickers I see on not only my mailbox but on the mailboxes of people in my neighborhood and perhaps almost everywhere.

They are all round stickers, they are usually either as big as half dollar coins, or as small as nickels or pennies. They are either made out of a thin reflective plastic or the smaller ones I've seen are just plain paper.

Now one of the odd and scary things I have heard about these stickers is that they have been placed there by people in working in secret for not just the government but for a up coming one world government.

And that the color of the stickers refer to the fate of each person when either the one world government or martial law gets established in our country.

The red indicates that they will come after you and kill you immediately, the blue means they will take you to a concentration camp or a "FEMA camp" and torture you until you either obey or die.

Yellow means that they think you will mostly follow them or be no threat to them and they will just let you starve to death.

Where as pink means you are totally in obedience to them and will basically be their mind slave.

Read more at http://www.snopes.com/politics/conspiracy/femastickers.asp#mK8eHmulIm2jJ00q.99

Obama ordered $1 billion worth of disposable coffins for use in FEMA camps? More BS fear mongering.

Recently the old FEMA camp myth has once again reared it's ugly head around internet, this time making it appear that President Obama has ordered $1,000,000,000 worth of "disposable coffins", as you can clearly see from this screen shot below:

And from this article here.

When I was reading the article one of the first things that clued me in that this was just a bunch of BS and anti-government fear mongering were the pictures.

All of these pictures have been spreading around the internet for years now in various conspiracy theorist websites and forums.

Despite what the website wants you to believe, these pictures are actually pretty old. Infact they've been around since the George W. Bush administration, as have these claims.

The pictures were also taken at a storage facility for Vantage, a company that manufactures plastic coffin liners, not some government storage facility. If it was a government storage facility the people who took the photos would most likely not have been given access to the facility for various security and liability reasons, or at the very least they would have been escorted around the facility to make sure they didn't hurt themselves or damage something.

Also, these so called "disposable coffins" are neither disposable nor coffins. They're meant to hold to coffins, and they're meant to stay in the ground for who knows how long.

While some coffin liners are bought by the government for things like military funerals, most of these purchases are made by funeral home to be used in private funerals.

The second thing I noticed about the article was the total lack of any references to back up all the claims made. All there was were some old pictures, an old video from 2 1/2 years ago that shows nothing but a few documents that means nothing and also has no links to the documents that are mentioned, and some ignorant people who clearly do not know that a coffin goes inside a coffin liner, and also makes up some outrageous claims without any sort of documents or evidence to back up these claims.

The fact is that there is nothing new about this story. This type of "story" has been floating around in one form or another for years and predates President Obama.

President Obama didn't order $1,000,000,000 worth of coffins, and Marshall Law is not about about to be implemented. All this is is more classic fear mongering being promoted by people who are very paranoid, or who hate the government, or (usually) both.

Is that a FEMA... trunk?

Recently on a Facebook skeptics group that I belong to someone posted a very "curious" looking photo, along with the commentary by the person whom posted photo the somewhere else on Facebook:

Now the first thing that came to my mind when I saw that photo was, "Wow... that trailer needs a good wash."

All joking aside ofcourse what really came to my mind was that the words on the truck looked like it was put on there via digital photo manipulation (i.e. photoshopped) and even if it wasn't, then so what?

Now my first argument for why it is photoshopped is because of another photo that looks almost exactly like the first one provided to me via Illuminutti.com:

Now clearly the second picture is photoshopped, and to be all honest it's not even that good of a photoshop job either.

Ofcourse just because the second photo has clearly been digitally manipulated, I have to admit that it does not mean that the first photo has been digitally manipulated as well. If you look closely at the bottom words "FEMA DISASTER RELIEF" that while the font style used for the letters are similar to the ones on the top, they are infact different.

If the first photo was photoshopped, the second photoshopped photo was probably done by someone else whom used the closest font style that they could find to the original words... unless the person whom created the original photo forgot the original font style that they used.

Now another reason why I think the photo has been digitally manipulated is because of the trailer itself.

Besides just being in need of a good wash, it is clearly a used trailer due to the fact that there is a company logo right next to "FEMA DISASTER RELIEF", as well as a logo on the truck that is pulling the trailer.

So if this photo was real, what it would tell me isn't that FEMA is planning on "something" evil, it's that they're moving a trailer from one location to another to another, probably for some bureaucratic reasons, or it's being driven around just to make sure that everything is okay with it and the truck that's pulling it (and before you point out that the person claims that it's coming from a FBI building in Virginia I should like to point out that I don't take such claims seriously unless I have more proof that it really did come from a FBI building in Virginia).

Also, if the photo is real then it tells me is that FEMA is pretty underfunded if the only big rigs they can afford to buy are used and can't be washed every so often due to funding...

Now this brings me to another reason why I'm pretty sure the photo was photoshopped, that being that the government does not buy used stuff (with the exception of law enforcement buying used vehicles for undercover purposes). Even if the government did infact buy used vehicles, they would have atleast have given it a new paint job, and have put FEMA's actual logo on it rather than in big red words "FEMA DISASTER RELIEF".

Also, there is one more thing about the photo that has lead me to believe that it is fake, and that being the comment of the person themselves.

The comment made on the photo says that it's heading north after "leaving" the FBI building in Virginia. My question which one?

The obvious answer would ofcourse be Quantico, which is the location of both the FBI Academy and the FBI Laboratory. But thing about all of this (besides the fact that the person making the comment might have been mislead about where the truck is coming from and going to, or is just outright lying) is why would the FBI employ FEMA to do something that it itself could do? More importantly if the FBI was trying to do something secretive then why wouldn't it use either a blank vehicle, or a vehicle that has a name on it other than the name of another government agency on it in such clear, bold letters?

All the evidence put together has lead me to concluded that the photo is fake, and that either it was created for the purpose of fooling conspiracy theorists and having a good laugh at their gullibility, or by a conspiracy theorist whom wished to make his or her claims about police state conspiracy theories seem more legit.